A clock circuit for use in high speed microprocessor and other logic circuits should have fast transitions that occur in a known and reliable relation to each other (such reliability may be termed "low skew"). These desirable properties of high speed and low skew each requires the minimization of internal propagation delay within the clock circuit. In addition, if the actual clock buffer circuitry is driven from an external signal, it would be desirable if the receiver circuitry were as insensitive as possible to the actual levels of the external signal, as well tolerant of drift in those levels.
These goals are met in the clock circuit described herein by employing a differential receiver in CMOS that is of the "common gate" configuration and that is assisted by an internally developed threshold voltage. The two sides of the differential receiver each produces a respective fast high-to-low transition that is then sent via an associated pair of gain paths to the actual output stage. One such pair of gain paths is associated with each side of, or output from, the differential receiver, for a total of four paths in all. As a consequence, each path needs only exhibit excellent propagation for a leading edge transitioning in a particular direction at the input of the path, allowing optimization (transistor sizing) to favor that particular leading edge. This allows each gain path to achieve approximately half the propagation delay that a corresponding buffer would exhibit if it had to be responsible for active edges in both directions. The four gain paths are combined with a latch-like circuit that creates "hard" (i.e., powerful) drive of complementary output clock lines only during the initial period of time when the capacitance of those clock lines needs to be charged. Afterwards, the level of drive is reduced to a holding, or maintenance, level. This can be done, for example, by sensing that the clock line of interest has reached its high state, and then turning off the large transistor doing the hard driving. Another way to do it is to sense that the complementary clock signal has reached its low state. In either scheme, the fact that the complementary clock line is now low is used as part of a cross coupled output latch that keeps a smaller sustaining driver transistor turned on.
By using such a two-level drive a small signal can be used to abruptly terminate the holding drive, while at the same time the hard drive for the other state of the clock commences. That is, there are low propagation time gain paths for turning hard drives on, and for terminating the holding drive (which are the four set out above), but not a separate one for killing the hard drive. Instead, hard drive removal uses the associated gain path to propagate an active edge whose direction of transition is opposite of what that gain path is optimized for. That hurts nothing, however, since the hard drive need only be removed before the next transition in the clock (a little less than a half-cycle hence), which is long compared to the propagation times, whether optimal or not. Thus, this scheme avoids the need for a abrupt termination of the hard drive, by letting it go away at a slower rate as soon as it is not needed. This preserves overall minimum propagation time for the control of each transition in the clock, thus producing a high speed low skew clock.